LinkedIn Got Rid of a Clone in Russia

If there is one thing I am ashamed of about the internet industry in Russia, it is that we seem to have way too many clones of various projects that are already successful in the US and internationally and almost no original ideas at all. Quite a number of the popular social networks and web 2.0 products have their clones here and the teams behind the bluntly copied products rarely even know that such clones exist here - and are often more popular among Russian users than their original products.

For example, the largest social network in Russia, Vkontakte.ru, is a full copy of Facebook and the guy behind it copied everything - down to the smallest interface details. But where Facebook continues development and innovates, the Russian clone remains virtually unchanged - so the similarities are less obvious now that it has been working for a few years.

But there are also clones that are less popular but still draw certain attention - and today’s example is a clone of LinkedIn, Professionali.ru (a professional social network as the name suggests). The network was launched in Russia earlier this year, in July and unfortunately for its founders (and probably for the people who invested $2 million in the development of the network), the LinkedIn team somehow found out about existence of the clone and sent an official cease and desist letter to Russia.

The letter stated that the design and content of the Russian network Professionali.ru largely resemble those of LinkedIn website and are protected by LinkedIn’s copyright. The lawyers mentioned the potential consequences for the owners of Professionali.ru if they are actually sued and suggested that the website owners stop using the LinkedIn copyrighted materials. The Russian owners of the business network happened to be smart enough to oblige and they changed the design of the network yesterday.

The Russian founder of the social network explained that they chose LinkedIn interface when they started working on a professional social network for a simple reason: LinkedIn is the best thing one could copy in this industry. But he mentions that it was initially planned that the design would be changed anyway as the cloned version was only intended to gain some initial traction and collect user feedback.

The irony is that the guy actually has his own profile on LinkedIn which I believe he used quite heavily in development of Professionali.ru - as something of a template. But anyway I am personally very happy to see LinkedIn making the first attempt of fighting the clones in Russia - and succeeding. Hopefully it is the beginning of a larger process as a result of which Russian web developers will finally learn what copyright is and realize they don’t live on a desert island and can face legal issues if they continue copying international products instead of launching original products of their own.

Via CNews Russia